Stadium Coverage

After it received conditional go-aheads from the university’s system governing board and president last week, the project came under fire during a Wednesday night meeting of Save Our Stadium Hughes that drew upward of 50 people to Westminster Presbyterian Church in Fort Collins.

“There needs to be one way to communicate that there’s still a fight,” said Dani Cole, a student studying art history at CSU.

She said there’s a perception in the community that the project is a “done deal,” she said, adding that “a lot” of students feel as if there’s “nothing they can do” at this point. If SOSH were to craft a petition opposing building of the proposed $246 million stadium, it would get into the hands of all those around her.

“I would go around to everybody that I know and get that signed,” Cole said.

Andrea Vanderbilt, a natural resources major, said she and others are growing student involvement with a group she’s recently started, SOSCSU — a spinoff of SOSH.

CSU President Tony Frank recommended to the system Board of Governors — and the governors unanimously approved his plan — to move forward with fundraising more than half the stadium’s total cost over the next two years. Frank will in October 2014 tell the board whether, based on fundraising efforts, it’s feasible to start construction or not.

Attendees at Wednesday’s meeting discussed whether and how opponents could deter people from donating money to the stadium without taking away from giving to academics. At this point, donors are people with “power” to move the stadium project forward and those whom opponents need to focus efforts, said Deb James, a SOSH member.

An emeritus professor at CSU said there’s a balance to strike; stadium opponents aren’t “anti-CSU,” he said. Instead, meeting attendees said one solution could be to educate people on how to specify where their donations should go.

At opponents’ disposal are a handful of website domains recently bought by stadium opponent and CSU alumnus Robert Phillips. The idea, he said, is that SOSH could fill the sites with information about the proposed stadium project and their views against it, directing people away from pro-stadium and CSU sites.

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Csufootballstadium.com, csustadium.com and newcsustadium.com were among domains purchased.

Another SOSH member, Anita Wright, believes next steps should include legal action.

“The only way to shut this down is through the legislature and a lawsuit,” Wright said, adding that she believes university leaders decided to build the on-campus stadium months ago and that taking public input on the project was part of a “smoke screen” and “farce.”

The university refutes the allegation. Frank has said the decision was his to make and that final approval power rests in the hands of the Board of Governors.

Another idea is to collect between 6,000-8,000 signatures and put on the ballot for a future election an initiative to prevent the city from spending any money to support or maintain the infrastructure of a stadium, said SOSH leader Bob Vangermeersch.

Moving forward, Vangermeersch said to on-campus stadium opponents that, as a group, they need to “reinvigorate” themselves and figure out where to go next.